Intel to unveil chips for HD video streaming

Intel is announcing a family of microprocessor chips that it says will speed the availability of HD video via the Internet. Sean Maloney, Intel’s chief sales and marketing officer, said last week that the chips’ increased computing power would begin the transformation of today’s stuttering and blurry videos, the staple of YouTube and other video streaming sites, into high-resolution, full-screen quality that will begin to compete with the living room HDTV.

Intel’s new family, made up of 16 processors, would first be used in servers and high-end desktops that compress the video. They are the first chips based on a new manufacturing process. The chips, developed under the code name Penryn, use a re-engineered transistor that is about half the size of its predecessor. It switches more quickly, requires less switching power and leaks less current than that previous transistor, reported The NY Times. The first products based on the new technology will be Intel Core 2 and Xeon microprocessors. Chips for notebook PCs, marketed as the Intel Core 2 Extreme and Intel Core 2 Duo, will be available in Q1 next year, said the story.